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Mickey Jo (2:02)
The first time I saw this play, around a decade ago, I was studying for a maths degree and I suspected that I loved it, even though I couldn't completely grasp it. Now, seeing it again in 2026, I know I do. But I'm also, for the first time in a while, palpably nervous to begin this review because no matter what I can say, I can't aspire to the wit and brilliance and intellect of the play itself. It's an intimidating thing to try convey. At the same time, though, I am incredibly eager to share with you why I enjoy this piece of theatre so much. So let's Talk about Arcadia at the Old Vic. But before we do, an introduction to me. Oh my God. Hey. Welcome back to my theatre themed YouTube channel or hello to those of you listening to this review on podcast platforms. My name is Mickey Jo and I am obsessed with all things theatre. I am a theatre critic and content creator here on social media and recently I went to the Old Vic Theatre in London to see their brand new production of Tom Stoppard's Arcade, a revival which has sadly proved unexpectedly timely due to the extraordinary playwright's passing at the end of last year, at which point this production was already programmed for the Old Vic Theatre, so the whole thing has become sort of inadvertently auspicious. It's also lovely that it's happening at this particular theatre, the Old Vic being a venue where Tom Stoppard's plays have been produced before, where I believe Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead made its world premiere. I saw the real thing there not too long ago and last week I headed back to see our Arcadia. Plenty to say about this play, about this production, about the way that it's staged in the Old Vic's current in the round configuration, about the notion of whether or not this play is too academic, too intellectual in a way that is off putting, as well as why it's so celebrated as a piece of theater, and whether this production and its performances lives up to that genius. If you have seen this or any other production of Arcadia previously, share all of your thoughts and feelings in the comments section down below. And if you would like to hear more of my reviews, then make sure to subscribe here on YouTube or follow me on podcast platforms. You can also keep up with everything I share across social media as well as in publications if I happen to by subscribing to my free weekly substack email newsletter. You can find the link to that in the top of this video's description. But for now, let us talk about Arcadia. So to my mind, not only one of Tom Stoppard's greatest plays, but also one of the greatest pieces of theatre ever written. When I first saw this, it ticked an awful lot of boxes for me, but was also, for that self, same reason, frustrating. Because you have to understand I went to see this when I was at university and I had been in lectures. That afternoon I went to the new Victoria Theatre in Woking to see a touring production. I think it was the English touring theatre that was producing this revival of Arcadia, knowing very little about it other than its legacy and its importance. It was maybe the second Tom Stoppard play I'd ever seen in my life. What I didn't anticipate was there being so much mathematics in it, and that some of the concepts being discussed on stage around the laws of thermodynamics would actually mirror lectures that I had had that afternoon in classical dynamics. Now, ultimately, and to cut a long life story short, I got too distracted by theatre during my university years to ever finish the maths degree. But it's a time I will always be transported back to by Arcadia, and not just because it's a piece of theatre that concerns mathematics in a way, but also because the entire attitude of the thing is so academic, it is so studious, it is so much about study and academia and eventually this idea of why we bother to try and learn things, to try and find answers, whether that's in the field of scientific research or historical pursuits. As Stoppard writes antagonistic dialogue between feuding academics, he is considering what it is about the pursuit of truth, and truth itself, that even matters. And in today's day and age, full of fake news and misinformation, I think that's more important than ever when we are living amidst a disregard for science and history. Both of those things are really cherished in Arcadia. And despite having that mathematical root into the story at the time, there was something about the sensibility of Arcadia that I sort of resented, and there was a sense of inaccessibility because I couldn't quite understand the whole thing. There are so many little historical footnotes, there are so many details. It is about semi complex mathematics. It is also about science, it is also about history and poetry. It is also about landscape gardening. It is like almost every other Tom Stoppard play, in its way, about philosophy. He was this remarkable intellect who liked to bring all of these different concepts, all of these different ideas from different fields into one piece of drama. And Arcadia holds them all magnificently. Anyway, that's some of my history with the play. Let's talk about Arcadia itself. It premiered in the early 1990s at the then Royal National Theatre and has been heavily lauded in the years since. It feels important that I try and convey some sort of a synopsis to you. Those who already know the play can perhaps understand why I've been building up to this. But here we go. Arcadia is set entirely in one room of a large country estate called Sidley park in Derbyshire. Only we alternately see scenes within that room taking place in two different timelines. In the earlier timeline in which we begin, which is in the very early 19th century, the wealthy residents, their guests and their staff are going about various different aspects of daily life. Everything from deciding together the style in which the garden is to be redone by the ambitious forward thinking gardener, to discovering who may have had a secret tryst in the greenhouse. And in truth, Arcadia is a play about science, It's a play about mathematics, it's a play very much about history. It's also a play about romance and sex, an aspect perhaps a little more neglected by this very intelligent new production at the old fic, but we'll get to that in just a moment. Our principal focus of the earlier period is the tutoring of a teenage girl, Thomasina, by Septimus Hodge, a character who, enduringly, and to my shame, I do think is one of the most attractive in theatre. And it's nothing to do explicitly with the actors who have played him. I just find the man very convincing and honestly, that says more about me than anything else. At the play's commencement, Septimus, who is witty and charming and sarcastically evasive, is teaching the inquiring mind of Thomasina about Fermat's Last Theorem. Only what she wants to know is the definition of the term carnal embrace, which she has overheard some of the staff talking about. It transpires that Septimus was spotted enjoying a passionate encounter with one of the married guests at Sidley Park. Thomasina, who is deeply fond of her tutor, seems to be growing suspicious of this, but is also hugely impatient for knowledge and understanding, both in terms of real world situations, as she is set to become a young woman of wealth eligible for marriage, but also far bigger questions about the complex workings of the universe. There's a conversation very early on in the play in which Thomasina asks Septimus if she's the first person to consider. Inspired by the notion of being able to swirl together the ingredients of rice pudding, but not swirl them apart again, evidencing that the world moves towards disorder and entropy. Whether it would in fact be theoretically possible, if the world were to stand still, to plot everything that exists in the world as it is at that exact moment, and on an atomic level, therefore predict everything that was going to happen for the rest of time. The mathematical route into which is the notion that you can plot shapes on a graph. Meanwhile, Septimus is flirting with her mother, trying to talk his way out of a jewel challenge. And everyone's in the garden shooting an awful lot of grouse. Alongside all of this, we also depict a modern timeline, one which is now sort of rooted in the late 80s or early 90s when the play was originally published. Generations later, an entirely new cohort of characters are in the same room in Sidley park, trying to answer questions about what may have taken place all of those decades ago, including, but not limited to the identity of a hermit who lived in the hermitage, one which we have just before learned is about to be built in the early 19th century, as well as the possible presence of one Lord Byron and the possibility that he may have shot and killed a man before fleeing the country, which would constitute a major historical discovery. In these scenes, feuding academics disagree about the diligence and rigor of their comparative study. While the house's new residents go about their own business. For one of them, Valentine, this means study of his own as a mathematician, he is attempting to utilize years worth of statistical records kept in the game books, all of the grouse that have been shot over various years at Sidley park in order to try and see statistical patterns. With the discovery of young Thomasina's incomplete research coming together with some of his ideas to form a conversation about mathematical iteration. All of which is quite possibly beginning to sound a little complicated. And I promise as a former maths teacher, I will do my best to explain it. What I do want to tell you though, is towards the end of the play, we have another moment in which a character in the more modern timeline wonders whether they are the first person to conceive of an idea just like Thomasino was almost two centuries before. Only this time, they are questioning whether the thing that makes the world unpredictable and flies in the face of Thomasina's idea that you could map out every single atom in the world and know exactly what was going to happen for the rest of time based on their atomic movement. The thing that disrupts all of that and throws the whole system out of order is sexual attraction and people behaving in a way that is illogical and contrary to their imperatives because of romantic ideals. They remark that sex is the attraction that Newton left out. Let me unpack all of this a little more as we continue to discuss the themes.